In telephone communication systems including a port module for controlling a plurality of port circuits for interfacing various terminal equipment, it is often necessary for the system processor to send communications or commands to each of these port modules to retrieve status or other information associated with the ports and/or terminals. In the prior art when a system includes multiple port modules, system controller commands are sequentially transmitted to and expect a response in real-time from these port modules. Disadvantageously, however, when a port module was not ready to respond or had a failure the system controller would have, to wait for the response or time out, respectively. These delays resulted in a degradation of the real-time performance of the system.